Global Transgressioninteractive, adaptive, mobile and evolutionary environments under people's control

Theme Leader: Yasu Santo

With the advent of digital network technology, many of our social, political and cultural contexts are no longer demarcated solely by physical boundaries. Our privacy is defined by various online tools, international borders are made irrelevant to a certain extent and globalisation constantly introduces a significant threat to local cultures. Our main role as architects to design physical boundaries, such as walls, doors and roofs, is no longer enough to define personal or institutional boundaries. It is about the time we reconsider the way we design spaces.

This theme group explores boundaries and thresholds defined by objects, politics, technologies and our own identities and critically investigate the relevance and validities of walls, borders, wireless network, time zones, and cultural differences in architecture.

International Collaboration:

From week 7 until the end of this semester, we will collaborate with a group of Master students specialising in Interaction Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. You and Hong Kong students will collaboratively develop a conceptual framework to deal with new type of boundaries and thresholds. While you will utilise the framework to define and develop spaces, Hong Kong students will define and develop interfaces. This is a very interesting opportunities to consider how architectural spaces can be augmented and enhanced by digital interfaces, such as a screen based media, augmented reality or portable devices. All collaborations will take place through the Internet and Video Conferencing. We will utilise new equipments in J214 for key online workshops.

Exploration:

Brisbane airport is operational around the clock, but most of, if not all of, passenger gates are not in use during the late night to early morning hours. While we can choose to push airline companies as hard as possible to operate around the clock, we should not forget that it would simply encourage them to waste more fossil fuel. If we are to discourage them from flying more passengers in and out of Brisbane, what are we going to do with the space? We will think about the way an airport or its peripheral buildings can operate effectively for 24 hours. The ultimate aim of this project is to propose a flagship building for the airport city that never sleeps.

We will begin by exploring how spaces can literally transgress and be transgressed. How can spaces be transformed, transported, merged and become something else in a sense pods in Potteries Think Belt project by Cedric Price and Plug-in City by Archigram intended to offer fluid and flexible spaces? How can they deal with local residents as well as national and international visitors? How can they make residents and visitors 'at home' in what we typically know as 'Non-place'?